Freaky: iPhone 5s Keeps On Tracking Your Movements Even If The Battery Is Dead

The iPhone 5s, as is often the case with new iPhone releases, brought with it a bunch of new and exciting features, including Touch ID, gold color configuration, and a 64-bit processor – the first to be found within a smartphone. Allied to the new A7 SoC was the M7 motion coprocessor, and not only did this pave the way for more advanced fitness and motion-related apps, but took the strain off the standard CPU while also conserving battery. But the M7 coprocessor may be even more powerful than we first imagined, with one Redittor having discovered that it tracked his movements for days, despite the device seemingly dead through lack of power.

Of course, when a device is switched off, we expect zero functionality to be taking place whatsoever. A blank screen is, as far as most of us are aware, indicative of a device taking a rain-check from all digital activities, but in the case of one man’s iPhone 5s, not so.

Reddit user Glarznak was out travelling when the unthinkable happened – his charging cable broke. Instead of seeking a new connector, though, he decided to throw his device into his bag, and continue on his merry way.

Only, upon his return, he noticed that Argus – a third-party step-counting app for benefit of the uninitiated – had continued to log steps during the four days in which the device was supposedly dead.

Sure, it’s generally accepted that batteries never “truly” die and conserve a minute amount of power, hence why, when your device’s battery has conked out, you can often still power it on for ten or so seconds before it gives up again.

But the fact that there was enough juice left to keep the M7 motion coprocessor counting steps for four whole days is a tad creepy / disconcerting to say the least, as if the device is continuing to watch and monitor your movements even when you presume it to be comatose.

I suppose, if nothing else, the story does underline the power efficiency of the M7, and although we might have gotten a bit carried away with some of the iPhone 5s’s more showy features, that the motion coprocessor is among the more significant, useful hardware implementations made my Apple.